It wasn’t that long ago that Barack Obama told Americans “al-Qaeda was on a path to defeat.”
He was hoping he could wish them away.
Al-Qaeda released an audio statement on Sunday that bomb attacks like at the Boston Marathon are within “everyone’s reach.”
France 24 reported:
Al-Qaeda’s military chief in Yemen warned Americans in an audio message posted online Sunday that the Boston bombings revealed a fragile security as he urged Muslims to defend their religion.
Qassim al-Rimi, the military chief of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, said making bombs such as the ones used in the twin blasts in Boston in April, is within “everyone’s reach”.
“The Boston events… and the poisoned letters (sent to the White House), regardless of who is behind them, show that your security is no longer under control, and that attacks on you have taken off and cannot be stopped,” he said, in the message entitled: “A letter to the American people.”
“Every day you will be hit by the unexpected and your leaders will not be able to defend you,” warned the man whose organisation is considered by Washington the world’s most dangerous Al-Qaeda branch.
Rimi said the killing of Al-Qaeda’s founder Osama bin Laden in May 2011 and top Yemeni-American cleric Anwar al-Awlaki in September 2011, had not ended the struggle.
“Have you eliminated the jihadist groups that have spread everywhere after they had only been in Afghanistan? Today, they are in your land or close to it,” he warned.
To the Muslims in the United States, he said: “We encourage you to carry on with this way, be steadfast in your religion.
